The Porn Problem

[admin]

Hi All

I'm sorry but we seem to be getting attacked by people advertising their porn sites on the forum at the moment. All I can do about this is: -

1. Let everyone register, and delete anyone advertising porn etc

2. Turn on one of those boxes with squiggly letters/numbers in, so a computer cannot register, and a real person has to type in the code - I hope that makes sense!

3. Allow people to join, and moderate them - they can only join the forum after I approve them

4. Create a list of banned words that cannot be used in posts/titles. This is easily got round with * and spaces though.

Has anyone got any other ideas? If you spot any can you let me know please. I've been working long hours and haven't had the time to be on the forum much lately. A big thanks to Linnear and Zoggite for alerting me to this.

I'm really sorry if any of this has upset anybody. As soon as I spot them I delete them.

Please do not click the links!

[Pharmanaut]

Originally Posted by admin

Hi All

2. Turn on one of those boxes with squiggly letters/numbers in, so a computer cannot register, and a real person has to type in the code - I hope that makes sense!

Please do not click the links!

Not your fault admin. The forum is a public place and they are like the graffiti artists.

Could I suggest option 2?
Also try this - my ISP has it, and I don't think they would be troubled if you borrowed it and adapted it. Who knows you may be able to give up the day job and just send out invoices.

I might start one of these chat things myself as a honey-pot!

Unsolicited Communications Policy

*** have registered all incoming voice and fax telephone numbers with the Telephone Preference Service.
We reserve the right to charge £36 + VAT for each unsolicited telephone call, fax, e-mail or sms we recieve.
Spammers of any kind are unwelcome. Telephone sales and Recruitment Agencies are given special treatment.
Calls may be recorded for training and security purposes, or in the case of spammers, just simply to shame them in public.
Unsolicited calls will generally be published on merit.


* Spam within the context of this notice is understood to be a commercial communication which has not been solicited.
In the event of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), the charges above will apply to each
individual email sent to any or all of our domains or domains within our control.

[hannahd]

Originally Posted by admin

Has anyone got any other ideas? If you spot any can you let me know please.

There's a thread in General pharmacy topics at the mo.

[Zoggite]

Originally Posted by Pharmanaut

Unsolicited Communications Policy

*** have registered all incoming voice and fax telephone numbers with the Telephone Preference Service.
We reserve the right to charge £36 + VAT for each unsolicited telephone call, fax, e-mail or sms we recieve.
Spammers of any kind are unwelcome. Telephone sales and Recruitment Agencies are given special treatment.
Calls may be recorded for training and security purposes, or in the case of spammers, just simply to shame them in public.
Unsolicited calls will generally be published on merit.


* Spam within the context of this notice is understood to be a commercial communication which has not been solicited.
In the event of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), the charges above will apply to each
individual email sent to any or all of our domains or domains within our control.

I love it! great idea!

Admin, I too think that option 2 ("squiggly lines") would be the best...

[admin]

Originally Posted by Pharmanaut

Not your fault admin. The forum is a public place and they are like the graffiti artists.

Could I suggest option 2?
Also try this - my ISP has it, and I don't think they would be troubled if you borrowed it and adapted it. Who knows you may be able to give up the day job and just send out invoices.

I might start one of these chat things myself as a honey-pot!

Unsolicited Communications Policy

*** have registered all incoming voice and fax telephone numbers with the Telephone Preference Service.
We reserve the right to charge £36 + VAT for each unsolicited telephone call, fax, e-mail or sms we recieve.
Spammers of any kind are unwelcome. Telephone sales and Recruitment Agencies are given special treatment.
Calls may be recorded for training and security purposes, or in the case of spammers, just simply to shame them in public.
Unsolicited calls will generally be published on merit.


* Spam within the context of this notice is understood to be a commercial communication which has not been solicited.
In the event of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), the charges above will apply to each
individual email sent to any or all of our domains or domains within our control.

I do like this idea, but the problem is that they often want you to reply to the mail, just so they know your e-mail address is "live". You can't send out invoices to people for posting things you don't like, it just doesn't work. In law its seen as an attempt to fine a person, and not a real compensation for the time it takes you to remove it. In theory, you could warn people that you will charge say £20 for each word of the offending e-mail, and send them a bill for £500, but actually collecting that cash is virtually impossible, even if they are found to be in this country. You would even have to prove which person actually sent the e-mail, and if there is more then one person that has access to the computer thats impossible. All you have in fact is an e-mail and an IP address, and if you trace it (say with Neotrace) you often find it bounces all over the world and back to Amsterdam or Africa!

Also lots of the servers that send out this sort of stuff are in places like Russia, Poland etc. There is really no way it would scare offf anyone in real terms I'm afraid to say - in my (and a solicitor I know) opinion.

I think for now I'll try option 2 and turn on the squiggly letters!

Thanks!

[admin]

Originally Posted by hannahd

There's a thread in General pharmacy topics at the mo.

Thanks - its gone!

[Zoggite]

Originally Posted by admin

the problem is that they often want you to reply to the mail, just so they know your e-mail address is "live".

By the way, have you ever heard of "Mailwasher"? it's a program that you launch just before you open outlook Express, it collects only the subject and the sender's details of any emails for you from your ISP, and then you can choose to "bounce" any spam, i.e. to send it back to the sender saying "error- message failed" or something like that, making it look like your email address isn't "live"...
www.MailWasher.net

[admin]

Originally Posted by Zoggite

By the way, have you ever heard of "Mailwasher"? it's a program that you launch just before you open outlook Express, it collects only the subject and the sender's details of any emails for you from your ISP, and then you can choose to "bounce" any spam, i.e. to send it back to the sender saying "error- message failed" or something like that, making it look like your email address isn't "live"...
www.MailWasher.net

Thanks for the info - no I hadn't heard of it.

[admin]

Hi All

I've turned on the "Image Verification" facility - squiggly letters!

If you log out and then go back to www.pharmacy-forum.co.uk and click register, you should now see the image you have to type in to register.

Lets hope it helps a bit!

[Pharmanaut]

Originally Posted by admin

I do like this idea, but the problem is that they often want you to reply to the mail, just so they know your e-mail address is "live". You can't send out invoices to people for posting things you don't like, it just doesn't work. In law its seen as an attempt to fine a person, and not a real compensation for the time it takes you to remove it. In theory, you could warn people that you will charge say £20 for each word of the offending e-mail, and send them a bill for £500, but actually collecting that cash is virtually impossible, even if they are found to be in this country. You would even have to prove which person actually sent the e-mail, and if there is more then one person that has access to the computer thats impossible. All you have in fact is an e-mail and an IP address, and if you trace it (say with Neotrace) you often find it bounces all over the world and back to Amsterdam or Africa!

Also lots of the servers that send out this sort of stuff are in places like Russia, Poland etc. There is really no way it would scare offf anyone in real terms I'm afraid to say - in my (and a solicitor I know) opinion.

I think for now I'll try option 2 and turn on the squiggly letters!

Thanks!

...well you just keep spamming the spammers with a bill.
Watching the baliff programs on TV they charge after each visit, so just keep increasing the amount on the bill as service charges.
They may never pay you.
Another option is to post their addresses on newsgroups so the spam bots pick them up and they get spammed from other spammers.
They can then pick up their addresses and spam each other until the end of time.